Expressions of public dissent violate the smug Brussels worldview in which all EU decisions are for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. Any challenge provokes accusations of populism and xenophobia. Nothing can be more alien to the Brussels mind than the cut and thrust of referendum debates over Europe — it risks giving the people a say over matters that Europe’s managerial political caste consider theirs alone.

And these people suggest that anyone who disagrees with them simply must be right wing fascists, indeed Nazis. A familiar tactic?

The idea that voters are the bearers of a fascistic, nationalist or irrational virus that threatens to tear down civilisation, emerged again two weeks ago when Tony Blair waded into the British referendum debate. “Nationalism is a powerful sentiment. Let that genie out of the bottle and it is a Herculean task to put it back. Reason alone struggles. The referendum on Europe carries with it the same risk,” he said.

Don’t be fooled by the apocalyptic scaremongering: these people are just frightened of losing. Blair revealed as much when he warned about “the perilous fragility of public support for the sensible choice”. It is a grubby mindset that reveals the lack of strong proEuropean ideals among the EU’s supporters. They, our managers, people like Blair, know best. We, the voters, the irrational public, cannot be trusted to be “sensible”. The EU’s enduring hostility to referendums reveals it to be a union of rulers united in mistrust of the people. The referendum question is the acid test.

All of this reminds me of William F. Buckley Jr’s observation that he would rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

The same goes for a random sample of Eurosceptics compared to the EU bureaucracy.

“How do I know that increased CO2 will not kill the coral reefs and shellfish? Let me count the ways” Patrick Moore

Patrick Moore, a co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace has skewered yet again the monstrous dissembling of the global warming carbonistas. If their silly science is so certain why do they need to lie and exagerate so much?

The propaganda is ramping up again as we approach the Paris climate summit. Since the temperature on Earth has stubbornly stopped rising, the new scare is ocean acidification and the constant threats to our Great Barrier Reef.

Something dire was needed to prop up the climate disruption narrative. “Ocean acidification” was invented to provide yet another apocalyptic scenario, only this one required no warming or severe weather, just more CO2 in the atmosphere.

Moore takes the reader through chapter and verse of why the menace of increased CO2 and ocean acidification is plain wrong-headed. Through the last half a billion years when life forms emerged, the CO2 content of the atmosphere was up to ten times higher than at present. As one would expect, the sea also has its own way of resisting acidification.

Then there is the obvious practical observation:

Finally, it is a fact that people who have saltwater aquariums sometimes add CO2 to the water in order to increase coral growth and to increase plant growth. The truth is CO2 is the most important food for all life on Earth, including marine life. It is the main food for photosynthetic plankton (algae), which in turn is the food for the entire food chain in the sea.

Moore concludes rather forcefully that:

For some reason, the proponents of catastrophic global warming ignore this fact. They talk of “carbon pollution” as if CO2 is a poison. If there were no CO2 in the global atmosphere there would be no life on this planet. Surely, that should be enough to permit questioning the certainty of those who demonise this essential molecule.

Don’t expect Will Stephan, Tim Flannery or any other of the highly paid carbonistas to respond to arguments of common fact with specific counter arguments. After all, who was there to correct the leader of the free world President Obama when he publicly announced that CO2, or was it global warming, was causing his daughter’s asthma attacks.